Ecclestone says Briatore ban was too harsh

The disgraced Renault boss Flavio Briatore still has friends in Formula 1 - well, two at least. Bernie Ecclestone has come out in support of his billionaire buddy and said his lifetime ban from motor sport for race-fixing was too harsh.
 
Ecclestone, a close friend and business partner of the Italian, said his punishment was disproportionate. "On reflection it wasn't necessary," he said. "It was too much. Definitely too much."  Driver Mark Webber, who is managed by Briatore, also sprang to his defence and described him as a "very good character for our sport".
 
Briatore was banned indefinitely from all motorsport earlier this week after it emerged he had ordered his driver Nelson Piquet Jnr to deliberately crash during last year's Singapore Grand Prix for the benefit of the team.
 
Ecclestone, who is a member of the body that passed sentence on Briatore, now appears to regret the decision. "I don't think it was necessary, but I was on the commission so I'm probably just as guilty as anybody," he said.
 
He said that Briatore should have come clean straight away. "Honestly, I am a friend of Flavio's," said Ecclestone. "He has just handled the whole thing badly. He could have handled it in a completely different way, and they would have said, 'You were a naughty boy' and that would have been the end of it."
 
Ecclestone, the Formula 1 rights holder, has a vested interest in Briatore's future. The pair, along with steel magnate Lakshmi Mittal, are co-owners of Queens Park Rangers football club - and Briatore's continued involvement in the club has been thrown into doubt in the wake of the scandal.
 
Under the ban Briatore is no longer allowed to manage F1 drivers, but Red Bull's Webber, who has been in his stable for 11 years, said: "I won't work with anyone else in the future if I can't work with him."
 
Ecclestone may have also shed some light on the identity of 'Witness X' when he spoke out. It was thought the whistleblower, whose evidence was key to the case, was another member of the Renault team aside from the three main players - Briatore, Piquet and engineer Pat Symonds.
 
But Ecclestone revealed: "There were three people who knew what was going on and that is it. No one else was involved." That adds fuel to the rumours that Symonds testified against his boss in return for a somewhat lenient five-year ban. ·